Game of Thrones fans, get ready for the most exciting four seconds of your 2014.

In a new trailer from HBO rounding up the best of 2014 – and what's to come for 2015 – a precious few scenes are devoted to the highly anticipated fifth season of the network's most violent, bloody and incest-filled game of royal musical chairs.

Take it all in, people, because these moments (found at 1:38 in the video above) are precious but fleeting.

Yes, George R. R. Martin, we know that every man must die. But that doesn't make the deaths on Game of Thrones any less painful to watch. Fortunately, HBO just made sure that many of the fan favorites could stay around for a lot longer.

You could say that Emilia Clarke's Daenerys Targaryen is the heart of Game of Thrones, and you might also say that Maisie Williams's Arya Stark is its soul. But no one would deny that Tyrion Lannister, memorably portrayed by Peter Dinklage, is the HBO fantasy series's brain.

How do you stand out among the dozens of cast members on Game of Thrones (fully two-thirds of whom seem to be gruff, bearded men)? As Tyrion Lannister, the wise-cracking dwarf played by Peter Dinklage, proves, it helps to not take things too seriously.

While the HBO fantasy series' assorted lords and ladies backstab their way to courtly domination, Tyrion is one of the the few characters who sees the game of thrones as the cosmic joke that is it – even as he remains one of its best players.

Dinklage, 45, who's nominated for outstanding supporting actor in a drama series, is the audience stand-in, and his withering wit helps bring a show full of dragons and ice zombies down to a human level.

Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage, who plays fan favorite Tyrion Lannister, visited The Late Show Wednesday, and confessed a shameful secret to David Letterman: He hasn't read the books the HBO series is based on.